Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Eight top-ranking members of the deadly Nuestra Familia prison gang entered guilty pleas to federal racketeering charges Monday in the conclusion of "Operation Black Widow," a local, state and federal investigation that has resulted in the convictions of 75 of the gang's members and associates since it began in 1997.

The eight pleaded guilty in San Francisco to charges of operating the prison gang as a racketeering enterprise. Prosecutors said the group's top officers issued orders to their associates on the streets from inside the security housing unit at California's toughest lockup, Pelican Bay State Prison.

Five of the defendants will be sentenced to life in federal prison, and three will get 10-year terms.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Gruel, who served as lead counsel on the case with Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Torpoco and federal trial lawyer Robert Tully, said Operation Black Widow had two goals: to identify and remove the Nuestra Familia's top leadership and to attack the gang's street operations outside the state prison system.

The eight defendants will be dispersed to serve their terms in federal institutions outside California in an effort to break the back of a prison gang that has operated with impunity within the state prison system for years.

"By getting the gang's top leadership to plead guilty and agree to go into federal custody and be spread to the four corners of the federal prison system, we have succeeded in getting them out of California and disrupted their ability to lead the gang," Gruel said. "And by convicting 70 Nuestra Familia street members who were active in Northern California communities, we have rolled back the gang's operations on the streets."

The $5 million investigation turned up evidence that the Nuestra Familia dealt drugs, committed burglaries, robberies and murders and trafficked in illegal weapons.

The five gang members who will receive life sentences -- Gerald Rubalcaba, 49; James Morado, 49; Cornelio Tristan, 43; Joseph Raymond Hernandez, 54; and Tex Marin Hernandez, 49 -- were considered to be among the gang's highest-ranking officers. Each admitted to having participated in at least two homicides as part of his guilty plea.

Daniel Perez, 42, Alberto Larez, 36, and Henry Cervantes, 40, will receive 10-year sentences. Perez will not begin serving his sentence until he has completed a separate six-year state prison sentence, which he has yet to begin.

Scores of other members and associates have pleaded guilty to charges arising from the investigation. Others who were convicted earlier in the probe include Luis "Roach" Aroche, the regional commander of the Nuestra Familia in San Francisco, and Sheldon "Skip" Villanueva, a captain of the gang in San Jose.

In accepting the guilty pleas Monday, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said he hoped that scattering the top leadership would help shut the organization down.

"It remains to be seen ultimately whether this prosecution was warranted, " Breyer said. "(But) it appears to the court at this point that this disposition (of the cases) makes sense -- and that, in fact, it is the only disposition that would have made sense, given the situation."

The convictions are the culmination of an investigation that began in 1997 after investigators in Santa Rosa developed new leads into the gang. Eventually the probe involved agents from the FBI, the state Department of Corrections and several local police agencies, working under the direction of the U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco.

Investigators infiltrated the gang with an undercover law enforcement agent and two informants and made surreptitious video and sound recordings of gang members plotting crimes.

They were so successful in persuading gang members to give evidence against their colleagues that had the case gone to trial, the government was prepared to have 24 former gang members and associates testify as prosecution witnesses.

Some gang members even ended up testifying against themselves. For example, a sworn affidavit drafted in connection with the case by FBI Special Agent McCarrell Crumrin said that one Nuestra Familia member who decided to turn state's witness against the gang ended up giving investigators evidence that was used to charge him separately with racketeering.

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